The British Empire. My Part In Its 'Decline'.: The Merchant Navy and Me

This is a story about a young man setting out on an adventure. It takes him several times around the world and visiting Pacific Islands, Australasia and the Americas when the world was changing fast. It relates a lifestyle that few experienced and is now no longer in existence. The changes covered ships, trading and the emergence of new countries and consequent challenges to previously dominant regimes. The story illustrates a highly personalised view of the changes as individually experienced. Along the way there are adventures, dangers and humour that it would be hard to replicate today. The author's naivety, and subsequent realisations, are a poignant reminder of how the UK sent its young men insufficiently prepared into a world that did not always appreciate or want them. It outlines opportunities that were lost sixty or seventy years ago but which may now be available again to those willing to grasp them.